Today's infrastructure networks are becoming more and more complicated and are including ever increasing numbers of devices with network capabilities. The Internet of Things (IoT) growth represents one growth area that cause enterprise networks, for example, to include substantially more network connected devices as compared to their historical requirements. One side-effect of adding such a large volume of connected devices is that infrastructure networks (e.g., corporate private networks) have become more complicated and may require additional network support devices such as routers, bridges, domain name servers, network time protocol (NTP) servers, gateways, etc. Each of these network support devices (or simply “network devices”) requires a configuration of network parameters in order to function as desired within the possibly complex network architecture. In some cases, changing the configuration of a network device may have unforeseen and unintended consequences to the stability, reliability, and performance of a corporate infrastructure network or portion thereof (e.g., a subnet). This is, in part, because changes to one network device may inadvertently affect the performance or connectivity of other devices in the network.
Prior art methods for determining correctness of a network change may not be completely automated. In some cases, network administrators simply make the change they believe will work and hope for the best. In other cases, limited test criteria may be performed after a network change in an ad-hoc manner to determine if the network “appears” to be functioning properly. However, if a subtle error is introduced to a network without large scale impact, it may be days or weeks before someone discovers that a printer or other device has lost its connection. Loss of network connection by devices is just one of the possible consequences to an unvalidated change. In other cases, a slight performance degradation may occur and not be noticed until a much later point in time. The degradation resulting in poor or less than optimal productivity of the devices (and possibly workforce) reliant on the network infrastructure. In other cases, the consequences of a subtle error may introduce a security vulnerability that can lead to potentially significant consequences if this vulnerability is exploited by an attacker. In short, incorrect configuration settings for network devices may cause undesired network performance, or even network failure. Accordingly, care should be taken when setting or adjusting configuration parameters of network devices.